The White Garden, and Other Great Reads

The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf, by Stephanie Barron
The author is known for her mysteries featuring Jane Austen, and now has a literary mystery featuring Virginia Woolf. The action features Jo Bellamy, an American gardener doing research at Sissinghurst Castle’s famous White Garden. It’s a good read if you like historical and literary mysteries. There are study questions at the end of the book, so this is a sure bet for book groups!

For more great books, take a look at the new Great Reads from the Reference Librarians list for December 2009.


Our Great Reads archives have moved-- please update your bookmarks. See the New to View page for a complete list of previous editions of Great Reads: http://www.perrotlibrary.org/new_to_view.htm

Children's Program Registration Is Going on Now!

Registration for Youth Services' Winter/Spring 2010 Program Session is going on now through Sunday, January 10th, 2020. [View the winter program schedule.]

• Our program registration is by lottery
• You must have an active library card in good standing to register
• Obtain a registration postcard for the program of your choice from the Youth Services Circulation Desk
• Fill out ALL of the required information. Incomplete applications will not be considered
• Address the reverse of the card to yourself
• Affix a first-class stamp (44¢)
• Leave the card at the Youth Services Desk
• Registration cards will be mailed back to you within a week of the close of registration

Questions? Please give us a call at 203-637-8802, or comment on this post.

Kate McClelland and Kathy Krasniewicz Memorial Scholarship to ALA

Random House Children's Books is honoring the memory of Kate McClelland and Kathy Krasniewicz with a special scholarship for a new or student librarian to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference.

From Random House's Website:
ALA Members: In 500 words or less, tell us about a new librarian or library student who has never attended an ALA Annual Conference, and in whom you see great devotion to the library community and promise in the field. Tell us how he/she would benefit from attending the ALA Annual Conference. The new librarian/library student could wina trip to attend the 2010 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.!

More information, as well as the application, are available at this website: http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/librarians/KateandKathyScholarship.html

Repair to front entrance

Please use caution-- the entrance to Perrot's adult wing is closed temporarily while damage from a car accident this fall is repaired.

Golden Y Award Winners Fall 2009

CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of the Semi-Annual Young Young Critics' Club (Y2C2) Jeopardy Tournament! They are the current holders of the coveted Wonderful Golden "Y" Award! (Yes, it looks like a lobster, but trust us, it’s also a wonderful golden ‘Y’-- stop by the Youth Services Department and see for yourself!).

The winners-- Team We Don't Know: Akira, Michael, Elizabeth, Lydia, Amanda, and Ellie

Shakespeare Colloquy: Hamlet

Anne Gilhuly is scheduled to lecture at Perrot on Shakespeare's Hamlet on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009, at 7:30 P.M. The event will also feature dramatic readings from the work by Shakespeare players Florence Phillips and Dick Leonard.

National Book Award Winners 2009

The 2009 National Book Awards were presented on Wednesday.

Fiction Winner:
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Non-Fiction Winner:

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T.J. Stiles
A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. This is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man.

Poetry Winner:
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, by Keith Waldrop
In these quasi-abstract, experimental lines, collaged words torn from their contexts take on new meanings. These powerful poems, at once metaphysical and personal, reconcile Waldrop's romantic tendencies with formal experimentation, uniting poetry and philosophy, and revealing him as a transcendentalist for the new millennium.

Young People's Literature Winner:

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose

On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery. Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure.

Youth Services Winter/Spring '10 Program Schedule Now Available

The Youth Services Winter/Spring 2010 Program Schedule is now available.

Our program registration is by lottery. Pick up a registration postcard for the program of your choice from the Youth Services Circulation Desk, beginning on Monday, December 14th, 2009. Don't forget to bring a stamp!

Complete registration instructions are available on our website, as our descriptions of all our program offerings.

If you have other questions, please comment on this post!

Tellabration! 2009

Throughout the world, the week before Thanksgiving is set aside as a time to celebrate the time-honored art of storytelling and story listening.

Join the thousands of people, young and old, around the world who will spend a unique and magical hour rediscovering the laughter, the tears and the power of the story, at TELLABRATION!

Check out all local Tellabration! 2009 events here, find out more at Tellabration!'s website, or call 860-439-2764.

Youth Services' Holiday Gift-Buying Guide 2009

It's here! Each year our Youth Services Librarian and young readers put together a list of recommended books to buy for holiday gifts. Our list features picture books, books for beginning readers, books for middle graders, and books for ages 12 and up.

View our list online here. The list is also available at the Youth Services Desk as a paper brochure.

DVD Diva: Cary Grant

Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant," Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."

Here are some of his movies available at Perrot:

• In the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, North by Northwest, Grant plays a hapless New York advertising executive who is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.


• In The Philadelphia Story a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage and she begins to learn the truth about herself. With Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart.


• A bishop trying to get a new cathedral built prays for guidance in The Bishop's Wife. An angel (Mr. Cary Grant) arrives, but his guidance isn't about fundraising. With Loretta Young and David Niven.

Book Recommendation: Emily's Ghost

Emily’s Ghost, published by Norton, and written by Denise Giardina, is a fabulous book. The premise that Emily Bronte’s tale needed telling because all her papers were destroyed (except for Wuthering Heights) was an excellent basis for this type of story. Emily's Ghost was well-written and captivating-- this is one of the best books I have read all year!

There's more about the book on the author's website: http://www.denisegiardina.com/emily.htm

-Barbara Glass

Annual Lions Club Grapefruit Sale

The Old Greenwich Lions Club is selling grapefruits and oranges, as part of its annual fund-raising effort to flight blindness worldwide.

Fruits are available for purchase at Perrot (ask at the Adult Circulation Desk). Grapefruits are $16 per case, and juice oranges are $17 per case.

Photo of the Perrot cupola

click to see a larger version

Klara Zimmerman, a junior at Greenwich High School, took this neat photo of Perrot's cupola for an art class. Klara says, "I am a frequent user of the library and I thought it would be cool to take some pictures there for my class. The photography assignment was called Angle of View." Thanks for sharing, Klara!

Tomorrow Night: Tracy Kidder

Perrot Event Reminder:

New York Times best-selling author Tracy Kidder will discuss his books, Mountains Beyond Mountains and Strength in What Remains, tomorrow, Thursday, November 5th, 2009, at 7 P.M. at the First Congregational Church of Old Greenwich.

The author will sign books at 6:30 P.M., and a reception will follow the talk at 8 P.M. in Perrot's children's wing. Please arrive early for this event, as seating is limited!

Please visit Tracy Kidder's website for more information about the author and his books: http://www.tracykidder.com/